His Three Daughters review: Savor this exquisite elegy to death and brotherhood, writes BRIAN VINER

His three daughters (15, 104 min)

Verdict: Beautifully observed

Rating:

Death, I was reminded of while watching the new Netflix film His Three Daughters, has been a constant in cinematic storytelling more than anything else, including love.

Since the earliest films, death has occupied a prominent place on the silver screen, although usually, for obvious dramatic reasons, it is sudden and violent in nature.

It is understandable that the type of death that most of us experience at least a few times in our lives, the lingering death of a parent or friend, is much less often dramatized.

But when done well, it can be more moving, more empowering than almost anything.

That’s why Pedro Almodovar’s new film, The Room Next Door, won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. It’s a compelling study, superbly acted by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, of the ethics and etiquette surrounding a terminally ill person’s right to choose how and when to die.

His Three Daughters offers a different but no less exciting approach to the theme of death. A man, of whom we see very little, receives end-of-life care in his New York apartment.

The source of the drama is the relationship between the trio of women awaiting his death: his daughters Katie (Carrie Coon), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne).

Katie, the eldest, is bossy, fragile, and high-strung. From her phone calls home, she’s as tense as a mother. Even though she lives elsewhere in New York, she’s not a particularly caring daughter either. But now that her father is on his deathbed, she tries to take charge, fretting over his obituary and a do-not-resuscitate form to sign, but exuding little warmth or compassion.

The middle daughter, Christina, has come a long way and so has at least one excuse not to see the old man. She has a young child and a life that, from the outside, seems almost perfect, although, of course, such lives never are, neither in the movies nor elsewhere.

The youngest, Rachel, is addicted to marijuana and her raspy voice is either that of a chain smoker or that of a woman preparing for a Marge Simpson lookalike contest. Katie, with whom she argues repeatedly, thinks she is hopelessly irresponsible. But little by little, we realize that she is the only one mourning the imminent death of their father, and in fact the one who took care of him with devotion, who shared his apartment and who will inherit it when he is no longer there.

There’s a lot more nuance and a few twists and turns in this sibling dynamic that I won’t share. Not that it would spoil anything if I did, because the dialogue and performances are to be savored. His Three Daughters is beautifully acted (especially by Olsen, who somehow turns the least interesting role into the most watchable) and smartly and witfully written by writer-director Azazel Jacobs (whose 2017 film The Lovers was another gem about the shifting sands of family relationships).

I don’t know if Jacobs wrote this story from personal experience or just from his careful observation of others. Either way, he writes beautifully for women. I watched it with my wife, who laughed out loud at an exchange between Rachel and Christina, who, according to the former, is probably going to have more children.

Christina is indignant at this description of childbirth. “Nothing happens,” she says indignantly. “There is no rupture phenomenon.”

His Three Daughters is on Netflix.

The Substance (18, 140 min)

Verdict: A horrific and macabre satire

Rating:

There’s a lot of popping in The Substance. The popping, in fact, is perhaps the least of it, alongside the cracking, popping, oozing and choking, in a grotesque satire of body horror that’s not for the faint of heart but could be for the ticklish, if you can find the funny side.

Demi Moore delivers a bold, career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a once-powerful Hollywood star reduced to hosting a TV sports show, then stripped of even that by her obnoxious boss (Dennis Quaid), who is looking for someone younger.

So she does what anyone would do in the same circumstances: she signs up for a top-secret drug—the “substance” of the title—that promises to reproduce her in a younger form in seven-day cycles. And it works. She gets a precious week of her youth (played by Margaret Qualley) before she reverts to the undesirable version of her middle-aged self.

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat has a lot of fun with this film, especially in the scene where, on the floor of her bathroom, Sparkle Mark I gives birth to Sparkle Mark II, known as Sue, and thus becomes a huge television star.

Yet for all its dystopian horror, Oscar Wilde would have recognized this story, which echoes The Picture of Dorian Gray, but of course has a particular resonance in today’s appearance-obsessed society.

As for Moore, it’s always particularly moving in films to see (with respect) a has-been playing a has-been. She does it wonderfully.

The Substance is now in theaters.

All Rise for an Exciting French Court Case

The Goldman affair (12A, 115 min)

Rating:

The winner of the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival was Anatomy Of A Fall, a brilliant, mostly French-language thriller in which the details of a dysfunctional marriage were exposed, in gripping courtroom fashion.

Well, I wouldn’t compare French courtroom dramas to London buses, because it’s not like you know you’re waiting for them, but here’s another one, and it’s pretty good too.

The Goldman Affair tells a true story, that of Pierre Goldman (Arieh Worthalter), a left-wing Jew convicted of several armed robberies.

Two women died during one of the robberies and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1974. But there were doubts about the integrity of the sentence and whether it was tainted by anti-Semitism.

Two years later, Goldman, volublely supported by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the actress Simone Signoret, among others, a second, highly publicized trial took place.

Unlike Anatomy Of A Fall, Cédric Kahn’s film takes place almost entirely in a courtroom, and consists largely of French people shouting at each other.

But the film is shot in a grainy documentary style and it’s all the better for it, as it leads to a genuinely gripping climax.

The Goldman Affair is currently in theaters.